article poverty, subsidised housing and lufhereng...

TRANSFORMATION 95 (2017) ISSN 0258-7696 85

Article

Poverty, subsidised housing and Lufhereng as a prototype megaproject in Gauteng

Sarah Charlton [email protected]

AbstractProjected to accommodate at least 22,500 households by 2023, Lufhereng is called the City of Johannesburg’s biggest integrated development. Emphasising both mixed income housing and economic activity, the provincial authority considers Lufhereng ‘a blue-print’, showcasing ‘exactly the type of ground-breaking project that Gauteng Province needs to lead sustainable economic growth and ensure future prosperity’. Located on the western edge of Soweto the development is argued by Provincial planners to be a natural extension of the township originating under segregationist South Africa, yet from a City perspective it has been an outlying locale of low development priority. To counter its spatial disconnect from significant employment nodes the Province and the City propose inter alia both subsistence farming and commercial agriculture to ‘become an economic catalyst for the region’. A significant proportion of Lufhereng’s population will be at the very bottom of the income spectrum in fully state subsidized houses. Drawing on studies of lived experiences of subsidized housing in South Africa this paper shows the relevance for megaprojects of the concepts of ‘invented co-production’ and ‘incubator urbanism’. Invented co-production refers to residents’ unplanned modifications of their built environment or reshaping of their household, evident in other low income housing interactions and likely to emerge in megaprojects despite their highly planned and controlled ambitions. Incubator urbanism re-centres attention on the importance of underlying infrastructure to poor households despite locational and economic disconnects. These two concepts, apparent in Lufhereng, both challenge yet also feed into the conceptualizations of forthcoming megaprojects.1

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IntroductionIn the drive to develop multiple large-scale housing projects in the province of Gauteng under the megaprojects trajectory there are considerable unknowns and uncertainties. At the same time there is also relevant experience to draw on which can inform our assessment of this initiative. The Lufhereng development unfolding in Johannesburg can be seen as a prototype megaproject, although it was conceptualised and initiated prior to the rise of the megaproject discourse in the region in 2015. In sheer size and perceived significance, Lufhereng echoes the South African state’s notion of megaprojects, being variously described as ‘the biggest single planned development area in the country’ (Urban Dynamics B nd), ‘the biggest integrated initiative undertaken by the City of Johannesburg to address the housing shortage in the city’ (City of Johannesburg 2015), and ‘a blue-print of exactly the type of ground-breaking projects that Gauteng Province needs to lead sustainable economic growth and ensure future prosperity’ (Lufhereng Development Company 2014).

When the key characteristics and conceptual underpinnings of the project are brought into dialogue with findings on beneficiary experiences in existing state-subsidised housing developments, questions are raised around the potential and limits of large scale housing-led developments to fulfil the objectives they envisage – of a path to prosperity through suburban property ownership and decent work. This paper articulates two key concepts derived from ‘lived experiences’ research and discusses the issues they raise in relation to Lufhereng’s megaprojects characteristics. The concept of ‘invented co-production’ signals the uninvited ways in which new neighbourhoods are subsequently transformed through residents’ modifications of the built environment, or in which the social organisation of households is adapted to new housing. Charlton (forthcoming a) argues these practices are more than appropriations of government infrastructure and that they are instead necessary complements to enabling such infrastructure to function – hence the notion here of ‘co-production’. The second concept, ‘incubator urbanism’, acknowledges the central contribution basic infrastructure and a stable locality can make in supporting survival under conditions of poverty. While the first concept points to unplanned change superimposed over infrastructure, the second thus elevates the importance of the original underlying infrastructure.

The article draws mainly on secondary material on Lufhereng and proposed megaprojects in Gauteng supplemented with personal observation,

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Lufhereng as a prototype megaproject in Gauteng

discussions and research into subsidised housing by the author and in published material. The article starts with a fairly detailed description of the Lufhereng development – its location, target population and components – to convey its intentions and character, before drawing out how this resonates with forthcoming megaprojects. I then introduce each of the lived experience concepts in turn and discuss what they signify in this context. The article concludes with the argument of how this past experience both challenges megaprojects ambitions and yet also plays into their essence.

The nature of LufherengI describe the nature of Lufhereng in three sub-sections, emphasising its large scale, incorporating a significant poor population, the development’s aspirations for formal, decent housing in a built environment of spatial quality, and proposals to conjure up economic activity to underpin the development.

Big, mixed income with a significant very poor population Lufhereng is a large scale, greenfield housing-led development on farmland to the west of Soweto in Johannesburg (Map 1). Construction began on site in 2008 but was proposed at least as far back as 1997 by Gauteng Provincial Government and the then Western Metropolitan Local Council (Urban Dynamics C nd). The development anticipates a resident population of somewhere between 65,000 and 100,000 people on completion in 2023 (City of Johannesburg 2015).

The wide range in anticipated population on the 2,080 hectare development echoes various shifts in the projected housing yield, from the 22,500 to 24,000 houses in 12 to 18 different extensions as described by the City of Johannesburg (City of Johannesburg 2015), to as many as 26,000 housing units spoken of by the province (Gauteng 2015). Yet in some documents there is a projection of only 18,500 households in nine phases on completion (Urban Econ 2014: 3), the yield shrinking perhaps in response to implementation difficulties and expenses encountered on site. The project has necessitated, for instance, the construction of a R260 million electrical sub-station (Lufhereng Development Company 2016). With 1,832 units completed by 2012, the City of Johannesburg (2015) planned to have completed 2,300 units by the end of 2015.

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Map 1: Location of Lufhereng and Syferfontein City. Adapted from 26’10 South Architects (nd). Available at: http://www.2610south.co.za/gallery2.php

The accommodation is targeted at different income segments, to be housed in both government grant-funded low-income accommodation as well as market related housing, some for ownership and some for rental. As with the projected total yield the precise mix of target market varies in reports. In 2015 the City of Johannesburg described a composition of about 7,500 of the fully government-funded low income houses for ownership (colloquially known as ‘RDP’ houses), approximately 7,000

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mortgage-linked housing units to be sold in the open market, some partially subsidised through the government’s Finance Linked Subsidy Programme, and about 6,100 ‘high-density residential apartments for rental, sale and social housing needs’ (City of Johannesburg 2015).2 Whilst these proportions vary in other documentation, it is clear that a significant component of Lufhereng’s population – about a third – will be at the very bottom of the income spectrum in fully state-subsidised accommodation. By definition this accommodates very poor beneficiaries who qualify for such housing inter alia through a combined household income of anywhere between R0 and R3,500 per month.

Derived from combining a Tshi’Venda word and a Sesotho word, the name ‘Lufhereng’ refers to a place where people come together with a united commitment (City of Johannesburg 2010). Residents are envisaged to come from a variety of circumstances and localities, including backyard dwellers from Soweto, people queuing on the demand database or waiting list of Greater Soweto since 1996 and 1997, informal settlement dwellers from nearby Protea South, former occupants of the farmland incorporated in Lufhereng (Doornkop farming community), military veterans (as indicated in Lufhereng Development Company 2016), as well as those – from anywhere - who choose to buy in to the mortgage linked housing. The delivery rate is anticipated to be around 1,000 (presumably fully subsidised) units per annum, anticipated to ‘go a long way towards whittling down the housing waiting list’, ‘releasing residents from paying rent for backrooms’ and ending ‘cramped living conditions’, according to then member of the Mayoral Committee for Housing councillor Dan Bovu. (City of Johannesburg 2015).

Attention to designLufhereng boasts investment into the urban environment and the architectural design of its houses to improve the quality of built form often criticised in other government-funded low income housing projects. The designers note that interventions such as verandas, varied house typologies, and integrating different income groups in Lufhereng help move away from typical RDP housing environments and ‘…provide a greater variety and a better animation and surveillance of the street’(26’10 South Architects nd).

In contrast to some other mixed income developments to date the intention is that ‘subsidised, lower-bonded and bonded housing… are mixed in order to avoid economic ghettos’ (26’10 South Architects nd). The result

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is not only an orderly, formal development but one with qualities of public space defined by buildings, evident on visiting the area (Image 1, Image 2). This is part of a long-term vision captured in design guidelines of how the area should look and should function, including where certain activities should locate and how residents’ view of public space is enabled. These guidelines will also ‘allow for growth and economic development along certain activity streets defined by row housing and flexible live-work units’ (26’10 South Architects nd).

Image 1: Lufhereng show village model. Available at: https://www.lufhereng.co.za/the-project/project-vision.html)

As a whole, Lufhereng is conceptualised as a ‘sustainable and functional human settlement’ (City of Johannesburg 2015), planned to include a range of social facilities and amenities such as schools – 15, according to the Lufhereng official launch video – a library and clinics, commercial and industrial space as well as a waste separation and waste management plant (City of Johannesburg 2015). The development represents a very significant investment of state funds from different spheres of government as well as private sector developers. Described as ‘a joint initiative’ of the City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng Provincial Department of Housing, investment in the Lufhereng development is estimated in some documents at about R7,9-billion (City of Johannesburg 2008). This includes funding to supply the costly bulk and connector services needed for this previously undeveloped agricultural land on the far outer edge of Soweto.

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Image 2: Lufhereng street view, 2017. Source: the author.

Edge location without an existing economic baseLufhereng’s economic development plan describes it as being in ‘the central portion of the Gauteng Province… in the general vicinity of the Roodepoort and Lenasia nodes’ (Urban Econ 2014: 2). It is argued by its private-sector consultants and by provincial planners to be a ‘natural extension’ of Soweto: a future growth area, because of the availability of land and the ‘natural flow of the urban sprawl of Soweto’ (Urban Econ 2014: 25). The site evaluation undertaken for the project gives it a good score (7/10) for proximity to other business nodes (Urban Econ 2014: 23), and concludes that the site has good potential as a mixed use property development. Relevant economic activity in the vicinity is identified as Protea Glen Mall, Doornkop gold mine to the north, and Soweto itself, identified in the report as a fast-growing city: ‘Property investors, especially the retail sector, are currently investing in Soweto’ (Urban Econ 2014: 21).

Yet from a City of Johannesburg planning perspective the area has long fallen outside of its public transport investment corridors, been seen as spatially peripheral and a low priority investment area as it fell outside

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the City’s urban development boundary (Ahmad 2010). Ahmad (2010: 22) refers to Lufhereng as one of a number of projects that produce large numbers of houses, in relatively straightforward contractual circumstances and on comparatively lower cost land, but contends that from a spatial perspective these projects ‘reinforce the challenges of marginal access to jobs, amenities and public transport’. Ahmad, a former spatial planner in the City of Johannesburg notes that

Since 1994, a disturbing parody of apartheid-spatial planning has witnessed most formal, state-sponsored housing initiatives within the City and Province mirroring the more marginal locations of many of the informal settlements or former black townships they seek to serve or complement. (2010: 22)

Proponents of Lufhereng see it as fulfilling and aligning with relevant policies and strategies across the three spheres of government (Urban Econ 2014: 3). However, this notion of alignment is puzzling: for example, building on similar approaches in previous policy and strategy initiatives the national Integrated Urban Development Framework is clear that housing should be developed ‘along transport corridors and areas with economic potential, as opposed to on the periphery’, and that this approach should also be promoted in the forthcoming Human Settlements White Paper (COGTA 2016: 64). By contrast Lufhereng, about 24km as crow flies from Johannesburg’s central business district on the periphery of a built up area far from the heartland of economic activity in the north of the city, is in an area of few significant business activities as demonstrated by the Gauteng City Region Observatory’s ‘map of the month’ published in May 2015 (GCRO 2015) (See Ballard and Rubin, 2017, this issue). This map juxtaposes proposed megaprojects with the density of businesses and the distribution of unemployed people across Gauteng, showing the significant disconnect between proposed developments and economic activity. Map 2 below is adapted to include the location of Lufhereng, showing a similar disconnect:

Map 2: The location of planned megahousing projects in context. This shows the locational disconnect between densities of businesses and the proposed housing projects in Gauteng (indicated by circles), with Lufhereng also shown (triangle). Adapted from the Gauteng City Region Observatory’s Map of the Month, May 2015.

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Manufacturing an economic base In response to the lack of economic activity in the area, an Economic Development Plan conceptualises the creation of ‘an economic base for Lufhereng that will create job opportunities and become a sustainable living environment for the community’ (Urban Econ 2014: 15). A key component of this plan is agriculture-related economic activity, both in the form of subsistence farming as well as commercial enterprise (Urban Econ 2014: 2), although the plan notes that currently, agriculture is not significant in either the economy of the province or city of Johannesburg (Urban Econ 2014: 56). The intention is to ‘promote small- to medium-scale farmers through intensive agricultural practices’ aimed at producing high yield output (City of Johannesburg 2015) including hydroponics and aquaculture (South African Broadcasting Corporation 2014, City of Johannesburg 2010). In addition, for residents there will be a ‘unique live-and-work environment with the opportunity to engage in agricultural activities’ (Lufhereng Development Company 2014a), including subsistence farming. These initiatives, seen as a first for Gauteng (Lufhereng Development Company 2014a), are intended play a more ambitious role in the area, beyond the project, to ‘become an economic catalyst for the region’ (City of Johannesburg 2008), and ‘…to stimulate and improve the local economy’ (Lufhereng Development Company 2016). Approximately 10,000 ‘job opportunities’ are anticipated from the farming and associated economic linkages (Lufhereng Development Company 2014a).

The agricultural orientation, whilst presented as a strategic choice of economic activity due to ‘the availability of land, market and technology’ (Urban Econ 2014: 19), and anticipated to ‘create numerous job opportunities in Lufhereng’ (Urban Econ 2014:19), also appears to be the result of geotechnical conditions: ‘the reason for the allocation of a large number of agricultural land[s] is because of the dolomitic soil condition in the area that was formed by the nearby mining operations’ (Urban Econ 2014:17).

Whilst the agricultural focus is highlighted in most of the publicity material on Lufhereng, the Economic Development Plan describes another two categories of proposed economic activity (Urban Econ 2014: 4). The ‘Industrial Hub System’ is in fact described in Urban Econ (2014) as ‘the backbone of the Lufhereng economy attracting private investors and catalytic projects to the development’ (2014: 43). It is anticipated to have the most employees (2014: 103), involved in work such as the manufacturing of steel windows and cookware, built in cupboards and cleaning products,

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as well as food processing and warehousing (2014: 111), for national and international markets as well as local ones (2014: 103). In some cases the report notes that labour will need to be ‘highly skilled’, ideally with ‘post-graduate qualifications’ (2014: 165), a requirement unlikely to be met by the subsidised housing population in Lufhereng. The rationale provided for certain industries, such as the production of steel windows and built in cupboards, is directly linked to the materials needed for the construction of Lufhereng itself, or subsequent demand assumed from resident households (2014:163,165) although there is no evidence of these industries emerging in the building of Lufhereng so far. Urban Econ projected that about 50 ha of land is needed for light industrial activities (2014:110).

The third form of economic activity proposed in the Urban Econ report is termed ‘urban systems’, and is to do with the goods and services required by the resident population: ‘The households will thus increase the buying power in the region and increase the demand for retail and business services in Lufhereng’ (Urban Econ 2014:41). The ‘personal services’ sector is anticipated to employ the largest portion of the workforce (approximately 31 per cent, or 9,000 jobs), more than double that of manufacturing (2014:83). The economic discussion is thus at times confusing in terms of jobs projections with different economic activity emphasised as lead or dominant in different parts of reports. Importantly, as with Lufhereng, the construction of megaprojects themselves are identified as job creators (Gauteng Province 2015:39).

Localised retail (butcher, spaza shops, and so on) is referred to in the Economic Development Plan as ‘community projects’, and includes a bakery project with mini bakeries, an informal traders’ market, and hair salons. Land estimates provided for these suggest that they are not envisaged to be home based enterprises but something bigger, located in designated sites.

The discussion above establishes Lufhereng as a large mixed income development with a significant component of very poor residents, in a carefully designed built environment located in an edge location without an existing economic base but with proposals for conjuring up retail, industrial and agricultural activities. In the next section I relate Lufhereng to the characteristics of proposed megaprojects in Gauteng.

Lufhereng as a prototype megaprojectKey features of Lufhereng described above mirror characteristics of the megaprojects proposed in Gauteng Province’s 2015 Mega Projects

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document, although some distinctions are also apparent. First, whilst not all megaprojects are on the periphery of urban areas – and megaprojects discourse refers also to existing clusters of projects within urban areas in Gauteng – many proposed projects are beyond or on the outer edge of developed areas (GCRO 2015), as Lufhereng is to Johannesburg, with agricultural and mining land on its flanks. The development extends and sprawls the city outwards, contrary to several of the City of Johannesburg’s Spatial Development Frameworks which aim at compaction, densification and reinforcing transport corridors. Further, Lufhereng is an extension of development in the direction of minimal current economic activity, and limited existing infrastructure. A similar point could be made about a number of proposed megaprojects, for example Syferfontein City, a megaproject planned to the south-west of Lufhereng in neighbouring Westrand, of between 60,000 units (SouthZambezi 2017) and 100,000 residences (Gauteng Province 2015: 56). Syferfontein is purported to link to others across a wide geographic area, though the concrete forms these take are not clear: ‘The project forms part of a conglomerate of residential areas in this region which includes Lenasia, Lawley, Protea Glen Extensions, Soweto, Lufhereng, Leratong and Kagiso’ (SouthZambezi 2017).

Second, on the feasibility of such settlements, Lufhereng reflects some of the very different perspectives on megaprojects evident between provincial and city planning officials. Some provincial officials see the area as viable development connected to other places – ‘…fifteen minutes and you’re in Maponya Mall’ (BX interview, Gauteng Provincial official, 2011). By contrast city officials convey the sense of reluctant acquiescence to the Province’s determination, and of having to find ways to support the project: ‘…In the city you don’t know necessarily what the plans of province are... Lufhereng was something that came out of the MEC3 you know and then you as a city must make that work’ (TO interview, former City of Johannesburg official, 2011). This required the City to revise outwards the then-line of its urban boundary (QB interview, City of Johannesburg official, 2011).

This speaks to the apparent contradictions and clashes in spatial analysis and use of terminology between the spheres of government. For example, the Gauteng megaprojects concept document speaks of the problem of previous human settlement interventions reinforcing apartheid geography (Gauteng Province 2015: 5), yet Lufhereng – and Syferfontein and other proposed megaprojects – can be seen to be doing something similar. The megaprojects concept paper repeats the well-known critique ‘that many

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of the State’s urban settlement interventions and other affordable housing projects remain on the periphery of cities’ (Gauteng Province 2015:15) and is critical of ‘poor communities… in the periphery of cities… in settlements of poverty and underdevelopment, dependent on the State’s massive capital infrastructure investments’ (Gauteng Province 2015:15). The approach speaks of an ‘overwhelming resolve to build settlements that are closer to employment and economic opportunities’ (Gauteng Province 2015: 36) in support of ‘radical and decisive spatial transformation’, yet it is unclear how this is being fulfilled through the Lufhereng and Syferfontein initiatives.

Further on the terminology issue, proposed settlements are referred to as embracing ‘integration’ and ‘inclusivity’ (Gauteng Province 2015:5), but the notion of integration in the document seems to refer to a mix of incomes, typologies and land uses within a development, rather than integration with an existing urban area or other parts of a city. Lufhereng is identified by Gauteng Province along with the developments of Cosmo City and Olievenhoutbosch as achieving ‘some level of integration’ (Gauteng Province 2015:17). Urban Dynamics see Lufhereng also as being inclusionary, confident that it will become ‘the benchmark for all Breaking New Ground4 and Inclusionary Housing Projects in South Africa to follow’ (Urban Dynamics C nd).

Third, in terms of similar characteristics, megaprojects are large in scale – each at least 15,000 units (Gauteng Province 2015:29, 34) – and while the yield in Lufhereng appears to be dropping from optimistic estimates as high as 26,000 houses to under 20,000, it still rates as a ‘megaproject’ in scale. Interestingly, proposed yields in nearby Syferfontein similarly vary by several thousand units, indicating possibly how proposed outcomes are ‘talked up’ with optimistic projections in the early stages, or alternatively how unpredictable development yields appear to be relative to real practical constraints. Furthermore, whilst rapid delivery to long-expectant beneficiaries is a key strategic imperative of government given security concerns about discontent and frustration amongst potential beneficiaries in accessing state benefits (Gauteng Province 2015:23), the experience of Lufhereng shows how difficult quick delivery is to achieve even in a prioritised greenfields project (due to geotechnical difficulties and bulk service delays, for example): ‘It took six years to realise 1,200 subsidised houses’ (26’10 South Architects nd).

Fourth, these projects are all designed for a mixed income population accessing different kinds of accommodation, including very low income

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levels (fully subsidised units).5 In Lufhereng the design envisages bonded and subsidised houses mixed together in a neighbourhood, a different approach to that shown in megaprojects promotional material which depicts separate ‘islands’ or distinct sub-areas within the development (Gauteng Province 2015). This island approach suggests physical clustering of similar income groups according to typology and associated distinctions in socio-economic character between sub-areas. This approach of zones of house-type and income-targeting has been critiqued, including at Cosmo City (Haferberg 2013), for not demonstrating and encouraging socio-economic integration or mixing between people. Instead it promotes distinctions in class and income, with boundaries between areas reinforced with physical devices such as streams and open space.

In Lufhereng, current and proposed housing is generally low rise: formal, designed, ordered development in an image of neat suburban living. Megaprojects anticipate more sophisticated multi-story development, medium and high rise in addition, although the concept document also proposes site and service stands for beneficiaries (Gauteng Province 2015). Megaprojects also indicate a range of facilities and amenities, as well as promoting an idyllic lifestyle. Crucially, megaprojects propose creating economic bases for developments in localities where these do not naturally exist, as with Lufhereng. This approach has attracted scepticism from planners arguing that experience to date in many parts of the world shows the difficulties of trying to do this with residential-led developments (Harrison and Todes 2017, this issue). As in Lufhereng (Urban Econ 2014) megaprojects similarly indicate agricultural projects, light industry, manufacturing and business as proposed economic activities, with areas set aside for different activities and land uses.

With the characteristics of an edge-location greenfields development very large in scale, with a mixed income target population including a significant population of very poor residents, planned with all associated facilities and amenities, and most significantly, a strategy to create an economic base for the development and beyond, Lufhereng is arguably a significant reference point for megaproject debates. I turn now to discussing a particular dimension of housing project research, that of target population outcomes and practices, and relate two conceptualisations of them to the Lufhereng profile. Here I focus on the lowest income sector of the target population, those qualifying for fully subsidised government housing, intended also as residents of the proposed megaprojects. Several studies

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in South Africa have considered the lived experience for beneficiaries of subsidised housing and of related interventions in poverty (see for example Ross 2010, Charlton and Meth 2017), demonstrating both the limits of this support but also the importance of state-provided infrastructure for the poor. This article draws on this body of work to consider the key questions and concerns it raises for Lufhereng as a prototype megaproject.

Two key concepts Invented co-production I term the first concept ‘invented co-production’. It refers to the uninvited, unanticipated actions by residents of formal neighbourhoods which transform the built environment through alterations, additions and new structures, as well as uses and practices, largely unauthorised and often non-compliant in terms of by-laws, regulations and rules. Beyond these physical and land use changes, the term also encompasses changes and adaptations to the social organisation of households in response to their state-provided housing circumstances – such as splitting the household across more than one place of residence in order for family members to access schools or work (Charlton forthcoming a).

Borrowing from terminology used by Miraftab (2006) to refer to forms of participation and citizenship,6 the physical changes and household practices through people’s actions highlighted here are not ‘invited’ – through a process encouraged by and on the terms of the state – but are insurgent, inserted into the environment, fashioned by people despite the official protocol: in this sense, ‘invented’. However unlike Miraftab’s (2006) use of the term ‘invented’, I do not see these practices in state housing developments as primarily oppositional, confrontational and best understood as resistance, but rather located in the terrain of a generally-welcomed housing intervention that is hybridised and appropriated (Charlton forthcoming a, see also Robins 2003).

Physical changes resonate with a variety of unauthorised ‘user initiated transformations’ (Tipple 2000) of state-funded accommodation made by residents in many parts of the world (see for example Ghannam 2002 and Schlyter 2003 for examples in Africa, and Robins 2002, Lemanski 2009 and McGaffin et al 2015 for examples in South Africa). Adaptations in South Africa include backyard dwellings, and structures for retail activity and services, and they range in construction materials and quality. These alterations to state housing can be perceived as informalisation of planned,

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orderly neighbourhoods (see discussion in Robins 2002). At the same time Lemanski (2009: 480) shows in Westlake, Cape Town that backyard dwellings for generating rental income are necessary to make the ongoing costs of the state’s housing benefit affordable to residents, as well to provide essential accommodation in a context of scarcity. She argues they are thus ‘a by-product’ of housing policy.

Broadening Lemanski’s argument, diverse changes to houses and properties as well as to the social organisation of some households help make the housing function in people’s lives in the current socio-economic context of unemployment and joblessness (Charlton et al 2014, Charlton forthcoming a). A range of adaptations are necessary not just for particular households in particular ways but also for the housing as a whole and its legitimacy: for it to become functional and supportive infrastructure in people’s lives. In other words, adaptations not only help sustain people’s lives but support or improve the infrastructure itself.

The effect or outcome of these processes in new neighbourhoods in South Africa is an altered environment from that planned or designed, the result of the combined activities of the state and ordinary people, though implemented at different times. The term ‘co-produced’ on its own might be applicable if the state and people had jointly negotiated the process and its end goals, and worked together in some fashion to achieve them. This is not the case here. Instead, significant parts of the process and the outcome is potentially a form of ‘rogue urbanism’, unruly and unpredictable (Pieterse 2011), hence the term ‘invented co-production’. The use of this term is thus a provocative extension of the notion of co-production: what is described here does not fall into one of two broad categories of either state-initiated or social movement-initiated state-society engagement through co-production (Watson 2014). It does not have the characteristics of collective action and intentional collaboration, confrontation or relationship-transformation evident in scholarly discussions of co-production (Watson 2014). Yet the actions of both state and local actors in shaping the housing environments suggests a link to this term, and its use here draws attention to a significant terrain of de-facto state-society interaction and production.

In the megaprojects concept document this form of change happening in new neighbourhoods is acknowledged but identified as a phenomenon of concern: ‘…a trend has been observed whereby informal dwellings are mushrooming in formal housing developments’ with ‘a negative impact on the housing market, environment and security’; ‘The biggest risk is

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the emergence of new slums in formal settlements, which will lead to overcrowding, crime, illegal dumping and grime’ (Gauteng Province 2015: 23).

Although the Gauteng Province acknowledges that transformations such as backyard dwellings are linked to unemployment and poverty, its proposed responses offer little to address these drivers but focus rather on management and enforcement of regulations, and ‘community engagement’ (Gauteng Province 2015). In this vein Jacob Mamabolo, member of the Executive Committee (ie political head) of the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements between May 2014 and February 2016,7 promoted human megasettlements as ‘“post-apartheid” cities in the province in which backyard dwellings will be eradicated’ (Mashego 2015). Mamabolo contrasted this to Cosmo City which, whilst exemplary in some ways, is marred by its yard dwellings: ‘“People have created a big industry there (Cosmo City) known as backyard dwellings, and that industry is turning Cosmo City almost into a slum,” he said’ (Mashego 2015).

In reality many existing housing developments to date show varied and complex ways in which income generation is happening – from people commuting to formal jobs, to local businesses and retail, to home-based micro-enterprises, to households heavily or solely dependent on social grants, and – at least in the better located settlements – an extensive amount of rental and sub-letting. The same can be expected in future settlements, despite their ambitions to create significant local employment.

In relation to megaprojects, ‘invented co-production’ represents a challenge to the formal, designed end-point built form, and a provocation to allow room for flexibility and adaptation of built form and of activities considered appropriate in that built form. This is not evident in the Lufhereng project: architectural and urban design investment and approaches such as terrace housing to provide a street edge, variation in number of stories, and use of colour, combine to produce a built environment of enhanced quality relative to many low-income housing projects, but without apparent acknowledgement of the extent of likely – and even necessary, as here argued – adaptation and transformation. Guidelines are in place to shape development going forward, and to channel and, by implication, restrict economic activity to certain designated areas and streets. Early indications are that some residents are frustrated by the row house design8 which they see as limiting their potential for backyard rental: tenants would have to enter and exit the back yard through the house, as there is no way around

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the sides (Ramosoeu forthcoming).Further, the job creation or income generation activities envisaged for

the area assume localised economic activity – community projects – in designated places and spaces on the site, but seemingly do not explicitly recognise or encourage the unplanned emergent usages. Nevertheless, both personal observation and a quick internet search shows there are people already running home-based businesses in the area (see images below).

Itumeleng Malebo, was a former farm labourer on the plot on which Lufhereng is built.... ‘I run a small spaza shop from the house so I can earn a living as I’m unemployed’. (City of Johannesburg 2010)

Images 3 and 4: Shop built in the yard of a house (source: author’s own, 2017); Sign advertising ‘Uncle’s Tuck Shop’ in a house (photo by Iwan Baan, available at https://www.lufhereng.co.za/the-project.html).

Incubator urbanismThe second concept I discuss is termed here ‘incubator urbanism’ or ‘incubator infrastructure’. Studies have shown how the provision or improvement of basic infrastructure can have key impacts on quality of life, potentially facilitating income-generation, improved health and opportunities for social activity, amongst other things (see for example Amis 2001). The term incubator thus acknowledges the importance of material infrastructure such as water, sanitation and electricity, shelter and land, for fragile and precarious lives operating in poverty. It recognises the potential for people to leverage off infrastructure, to improve life and

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advance prospects, to offer hope, and ultimately to thrive. Yet the notion of incubator urbanism may also refer to something more essential than this: to merely sustaining life, a way of surviving, keeping going, and hanging on, rather than thriving.

The notion of incubator urbanism is inspired by Bank’s (2011) concept of ‘fractured urbanism’. In the apartheid-era township of Duncan Village, East London, Bank sees poverty-stricken people in economically marginalised areas clinging to state services and resources, competing for them, demanding more of them. Old social and physical infrastructure in these township areas buckles under the pressure, the weight of demand and the increased competition, cracking and rupturing: this is the notion of fracturing he invokes. Bank explores the social processes associated with this and their diverse impacts, including practices of household fragmentation and regrouping, and the agency people show in these processes, in this context of failing economic prospects. Importantly this form of fracturing and clinging, he says ‘is centrally underpinned by a desire for greater rather than less dependence on the state’ (Bank 2011: 242).

The domestic infrastructure backbone in South Africa continues to be strongly associated with delivery by the state, both through remedial infrastructure work and extension of infrastructure in old apartheid settlements but also through the massive amounts of new infrastructure on greenfield land delivered through the state’s low-income housing programme. This includes kilometres of sewer pipes, water pipes and roads that accompany this major distribution of land and housing. These areas are shown in turn have their own social processes and dynamics, evident inter alia in the ways in which some households adapt their social configuration across geographies both within settlements and beyond in response to their circumstances (Wiesenthal 2011, Charlton forthcoming a). These processes can be seen as expressing an emergent urbanism that can be directly linked to the framework of underlying infrastructure and its opportunities, costs and limits.

Receipt of a house and infrastructure package in a new housing development is significant not only in its purely material conditions – such as access to fresh water and functioning toilets which are not to be underestimated as housing beneficiaries testify (see for example Charlton and Meth 2017) - but also in the importance of being recognised by the state, seen, acknowledged and responded to (Zack and Charlton 2003), even if the concrete form of this acknowledgement makes little inroad into

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shifting forms of inequality and access to opportunity. A form of inclusion within a pattern of inequality (Anand and Rademacher 2011), this is a trend echoed in other countries such as India. In South Africa the inclusion is often into formal housing and access to services, into suburbia, into property ownership, but within an overall system of unequal land values and economic opportunity that is little dented or threatened by such inclusion. The inclusion does come with some forms of opportunity though: some land for growing or tenanting, a secure home base where one can make or sell things, or even, perhaps, just a reasonable place to be, in poverty – a place with legitimacy, often in much better physical circumstances and comfort than before, with some dignity and the sense of respectability that might come with it (Ross 2010).

Promotional material for Lufhereng echoes this notion of achieving a decent and secure home:

Nomasiza Mpeqeka, a 75-year-old pensioner, has been on the housing waiting list since 1996. ‘I live with two of my grandchildren and I’m glad that they now have a place they call home. I used to live in a backroom in Meadowlands for years but now I have a place I can call my home,’ she said. (City of Johannesburg 2010)

From this perspective people receiving the housing benefit come from a situation of few prospects, little option of moving without state assistance to a locality of greater opportunity (which would likely be one of greater cost too), and what is offered by the package of state-funded housing and infrastructure is the opportunity of better material quality and relatively cheap peri-urban living. Citing Schoonraad (2000), Todes (2003) notes that, in something of a challenge to the orthodoxy of spatial compaction advocated in many policy documents, some South African research has shown the appeal peripheral locations may have for those households in search of more land for income generating activities or to accommodate changing family needs, and cheaper, quieter living. In a related vein, although focusing on informal settlements, Cross (nd) makes the argument that peripheral settlements attract those in search of better housing, whilst more central informal settlements are sought by those prioritising jobs access. In the case of Lufhereng, the development promises an agricultural idyll in which the settlement itself is claimed to be self-sustaining (and more: economy-stimulating), and thus the households within it, a commitment suggested too in megaprojects discourse. Although there is no evidence to date of this economic lifeline operating for households already living for

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some years in Lufhereng (Ramosoeu forthcoming), the promise of it that accompanies a fresh start for relocating families must be powerful.

In this example from government’s 20-year Review in 2014, a Lufhereng housing beneficiary is depicted as not having been able to move out of a backyard shack in Protea South for 15 years, and having been on ‘the housing waiting list’ for 14 years:

When Samuel Kubayi arrived in Johannesburg in 1996 from the Eastern Cape, his goal was to find a job in the City of Gold and build a proper home for his family. Struggling to raise enough money to build a house, he ended up renting a back room at a friend’s house in Protea South, Soweto. This would be his home for more than 15 years … (South African Broadcasting)

The report argued that his life has improved significantly since moving to Lufhereng:

He is now a proud owner of a two-bedroom house with his own bathroom which has a shower, bath, basin and toilet. He enjoys warm water from the government-sponsored solar geyser installed at his home. Schools, clinics and recreational facilities are all situated less than a kilometre away from his home…‘This is home for me. Gone are the days where you will just have a house and then there is no nearby school for children. Everything will be here for them’, says 44-year-old Kubayi. His neighbour, 68-year-old pensioner Elijah Bulana, grows vegetables on his garden and every Monday walks to a nearby clinic to collect his medication for high-blood pressure. Bulana says he enjoys living in a place where he is surrounded by everything he needs. (SABC 2014)

This is the promise of a life in a formal, orderly, comfortable settlement with the anticipation of all necessary facilities and amenities, jobs and other forms of sustenance (such as subsistence farming), not removed from but with higher income groups very close by. Yet this powerful and ambitious image of megaprojects – modernist in nature - does not admit the real difficulties of creating an economic base to sustain through the previously described concept of invented co-production.

ConclusionThe two concepts of invented co-production and incubator urbanism illuminate different aspects of megaprojects from an everyday life lens in relation to very poor residents. Invented co-production flags the awkward juxtaposition of carefully designed end-product accommodation and

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land-use organisation along with a particular vision of a life and lifestyle exemplifying residential order and suburban living, with the real-life practices of built form adaptation and transformation, often fundamental to generating income in a context of jobless, poverty and spatial disconnect. This challenges the formal and sophisticated vision of housing and orderly living evident in megaproject promotional material and in Lufhereng’s attention to architectural and urban design, produced largely in the absence of invited beneficiary input. It may also challenge or threaten the mixed income nature of these developments, as developers argue that practices seen to be informal or unruly amongst low income sections of a development negatively affect the marketability of mortgage-linked accommodation – a point alluded to also in megaprojects documentation (Gauteng Province 2015).

On the other hand, incubator urbanism shows the importance and value placed by ordinary people on a dignified house and the material benefit of engineering services even in peripheral places on the edge, both in actuality and in potential, in the very same context of joblessness, poverty and spatial disconnect. It flags the significance of developing a place offering some, if limited, opportunity materially and, by extension, politically. Thus it feeds into the pressure for megaprojects because of their genuine potential to address better living places for badly housed and very poor constituencies. In the absence of a clear job creation strategy nationally – or as an alternative to it – neighbourhood development creates places for people to be, though with significant long-term costs and consequences for government, and possibly for households too, that require careful discussion. This article shows how these two concepts relate to Lufhereng, considering the small proportion of residents already living on site, but particularly pertinent when considered in relation to the ambitious plans to create an economic base for the area out of more or less nothing. Together these concepts serve to highlight both the continuing appeal for the state of pursuing the megaprojects trajectory and its limitations.

Notes1. Thanks to Richard Ballard, Warren Smit and anonymous reviewers for helpful

comments on an initial version. This work is based on research supported by the National Research Foundation and the ESRC project entitled Living the urban periphery: investment, infrastructure and economic change in African city regions, ES/NO14111/1.

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2. Urban Econ (2014) reports fewer bonded units (5582) and high density units (4362), whilst conversely the Lufhereng project site indicates about 8,300 RDP and a similar number of bonded units (Lufhereng Project A).

3. Provincial member of the Executive Committee (ie the political head of a portfolio).

4. Breaking New Ground, a reference to the 2004 national policy amendment that emphasised integrated human settlements rather than housing delivery.

5. There is some ambiguity as to what range of income-levels are envisaged in megaprojects – for example, the 2015 promotional video claims the megaprojects trajectory moves ‘from RDP to new typologies’, and showcases BNG housing (GDHS video), but in graphics it points to ‘affordable’ housing (rather than low income), suggesting a focus on lower and middle income without an inclusion of very low or higher incomes levels.

6. Miraftab (2004) credits Cornwall (2002) for the phrase ‘invited spaces of citizenship’.

7. Since 2016 Jacob Mamabolo has been the MEC for the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development.

8 There is a mix of row housing, semi-detached and detached housing in the development.

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